Low Preparation Speaking Activities

  Throw the dice

Aim:  Develop communicative skills by asking and answering questions on different topics. This exercise is especially useful to revise different topics for a speaking exam.

Materials: An online dice and post it

Before the class

Provide each group with three or four sticky notes.

Write the topics you want to revise on clean sheets of paper. You’ll need as many as topics you want to revise. Put them on the walls of the class. 

• work
• sports
• education
• free time activities

How to play

Assign a wh- word to each number on the dice and write it on the board for all the learners to see.

• 1 – why
• 2 – where
• 3 – when
• 4 – what
• 5 – how
• 6 – who

Ask learners to work in pairs or in groups of three.

Throw the dice.

When the number appears, point to the board where the numbers and their corresponding wh-words are displayed.

Ask the groups to choose a topic and write a question about their chosen topic beginning with the wh- word that corresponds to that number. For example,

• Group 1 on sports: Why do people practise extreme sports?
• Group 2 on education: Why is it helpful to learn a second language?

Encourage learners to write open questions to generate conversation.

Once they have written their question on the sticky note, ask them to stand up and place the note next to the topic the question refers to.

Throw the dice again and repeat. This time, groups must choose a different topic. They can do this after throwing the dice.

Once you have at least three or four questions per topic, ask learners to stand up in their groups, next to a topic.

Ask them to talk about the questions in groups.

Allow about five minutes per poster. Then ask them to move clockwise to the next topic.

Source:British council